Cooking appliances are known which comprise upper and lower bodies which are hinged together so as to be opened and closed. Each of the upper and lower bodies comprise complementary mould portions such that when the upper and lower bodies are brought together into the closed configuration a mould is formed in which a food product may be cooked. Normally both the upper and lower bodies are formed with electric heating elements to cook the food product.
Examples of such prior known cooking appliances are toasted sandwich makers, waffle makers, and the present applicant has previously proposed an electric pie maker. Such a cooking appliance has been proposed for hamburgers, but in contrast to other food products such as sandwiches hamburgers present particular problems.
In particular because of the constituency of hamburger meat it is important that the mould when formed should completely define the shape of the resultant hamburger. However if this is simply achieved by bringing together two half-mould portions each corresponding to one half of the hamburger, it can be difficult to remove the cooked hamburger from the mould afterwards. It may for example be necessary to insert a knife, spatula, or similar utensil between the edge of the mould and the hamburger, and this may cause the hamburger to break up, or worse may damage the surface of the mould--especially if the surface is provided with a non-stick coating.